Taking Care of Babies

Lincoln will be 3 weeks old tomorrow! He finally peed on me while I was changing his diaper this morning! I say finally because everytime I've changed his diaper I've braced myself for him to just let loose at any moment. Then in a moment I wasn't looking all of a sudden I see this stream of water out of the corner of my eye. I was all over the sheets on our bed, all over my lap, and then all over his back--which he wasn't too happy about the second it made him feel cold. It was pretty funny. It's only what's to be expected from a baby boy, and I knew this day would eventually come. :)

These past 10 days or so Lincoln and I have also gotten a lot better at nursing. This might be a bit TMI--or just into the nitty gritty-- but after quite a miserable few days of having extremely painful nursing sessions and even a nipple that bled, I decided I needed to go see the lactation consultants to get some serious help. And to sum it up--we're doing a lot better! But let me tell you: breastfeeding is a serious committment! Holy cow! I don't think I realized the implications of what it really meant to have to feed a baby every 3 hours or so. It takes about an hour to fill his tummy, which means I have a lot of time to just sit and think or watch something on Hulu. It's also not exactly glamorous to smell like sour milk all the time because it ended up being just a little too long between feedings. But, it is all very worth it knowing that this is the best nourishment he could recieve and it's also true that it provides a bond between mother and baby that I think nature sort of intended. I know that for some women breastfeeding doesn't work out for many reasons. I am very grateful that for me it has worked, especially after having a rough start.

Taking care of this brand new baby has also been interesting because it's sort of made me think about where I learned how to do all of this. How to burp, how to change a diaper with legs kicking all over, how to know if he's hungry, how to bathe him, and dress him, and suck the boogers out of his nose etc... It's all because of watching my mom. Since I was the oldest child I watched her take care of 3 little babies. Granted, I was very young when Melissa and Nate were born, but when McKayla was born I was 11 and during these last 3 weeks I have had tons of flashbacks to watching my mom with McKayla as a tiny baby. (I do have a few memories with Nate too--including one where he peed on himself on the changing table). It seems like everything I do is second nature, but as soon as I do it my mind's eye comes up with this memory of watching my mom. My brain has sort of tapped into this vault of memories that I haven't really thought too much about for 13 years. I don't have specific memories of her showing me, but I've realized that she taught me by example how to take care of babies--the one thing she didn't teach me was how to nurse (for obvious reasons), which sort of explains why I needed extra help. In a way, it makes me feel closer to her even though she is gone.  And for that, I am grateful. Writing it all down makes it feel even more special.

And now, moving on to some photos we've taken over the last few days...

He seems to like water so far.

This poor little guy just got woken up...